The biggest movie in Chinese history is getting ready to invade the United States, with the first trailer and poster for Monster Hunt. Variety reported earlier this week that Monster Hunt will get a North American theatrical release, with domestic distributor FilmRise setting a January 22 release date. The 3D action fantasy movie will be going up against The 5th Wave, The Boy and Dirty Grandpa.

The story centers on a baby monster named Huba, the child of a human man and a monster queen. This newborn creature is threatened by both monster-hating humans and monsters attempting to capture the new-born in an ancient world based on medieval China. The cast includes Wei Tang, Baihe Bai, Eric Tsang, Wu Jiang, Wallace Chung, Boran Jing, Chen Yao, Elaine Jin, Xiaodong Guo and Ni Yan. Here's what FilmRise CEO Danny Fisher had to say in a statement.

"We have carefully edited the English language version to be the equivalent of a PG rating, and we believe North American kids and their parents will embrace the film in the same way as Chinese audiences have."

FilmRise will be releasing both an English-language version and a Chinese-language version, with the company teaming with Asian specialty distributor Asia Releasing to release the live-action/CGI hybrid film in all major North American markets. Deadline reports that the Chinese version will include 13 minutes of footage that isn't in the English version. The film marks the feature-length directorial debut of Raman Hui, who previously served as a character designer and supervising animator on Shrek. He was also an animation director on DreamWorks Dragons.

Monster Hunt earned a whopping $380.9 million (2.428 billion yuan) in China last year, overtaking Furious 7 as the highest-grossing movie in Chinese box office history. In the 21 years since China re-opened its market to allow foreign movies, Monster Hunt is the only Chinese-made film to become the highest-grossing movie of the year. Take a look at the first footage and poster, and stay tuned for more on Monster Hunt.

Monster Hunt Poster